Welcome to Big for Society. In this episode, I talked to Jonathan,
the listener who went to the twenty twenty three Washington State BFRO expedition and what
happened there. It's a very interesting chat, a lot of things that outsiders
don't normally get to see. If you've got a Bigfoot encounter, please contact
me directly at Big for Society at gmail dot com if you'd like to come
on the show and share that. Do you wish there were more Big for
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So check it out, guys. If you don't like it, no
hard feelings, but hey, let's get on with the show. Enjoy all
right, Big for Society. I've got the privilege of talking to Jonathan.
He's from the Pacific Northwest. Jonathan reached out to me about an expedition he
was on and some interesting things that happened on it. But how's it going
today, John? Then, Oh, pretty well on yourself. I'm having
a great night. I'm glad to be able to talk to you. And
uh, you know, I'm going to go ahead and let you get right
into it. Yeah, so we are. Me and my brother my dad
attended a expedition to Bufo last July. And there's the group was about a
little over twenty of us and we went out to Limbon Peninsula a little the
area around forks and yeah, no. They constantly kept telling us the whole
time that we can They basically promised that they could put us into a situation
where they could try their best to have something happen, but they can't promise
it, obviously, And we were completely surprised by just how much happened.
I would be spanning for like four days. It was one of their more
eventful ones they'd had in the past couple of years. That's awesome. And
was this the first time you were being involved with a bigfoot event like this
or like how long had you to bigfoot four? Oh? Yeah, since
I was a kid. It was more of like funny enough. It was
kind of like my senior year graduation present in a way, which I thought
was kind of fun, But yeah, I've been into it for forever,
So it's just more of like I finally got a chance to do it.
You know. That's awesome. Is your dad really into it as well?
Yeah he is. The three of us were It was one of those things
that we kind of all fancied, we just never got around actually sitting down
and finally doing it. We're like, oh, we actually have a chance
to do it, so let's do it. How did you get set up
with going on the expedition? Did you have to get a lot of gears
or had you been hiking before? Yeah, so you know, did the
whole winter. Cabella has picked up a couple of camping camping materials and whatnot,
and they kind of did like a grocery store run. They gave us
a rundown of what you should and shouldn't bring. Yeah, it was just
more of just getting the supplies in general, like the tents and the food
you need. And the only downside is obviously there wasn't any showers because we're
literally camping for four days. But it was honestly really fun, Like I
never thought, you know, being like just not showering four days a bunch
of twenty year old, twenty random strangers would be like that fun. If
that makes sense, I get it. I've also been out on a few
things not BFRO related, but it was independent and it's just really nice to
get out there disconnect from different things, especially if you're in the Pacific Northwest
where it's beautiful a year long. Oh that's true. I mean you could
probably go to a grocery store and it'd still be beautiful because it's in the
Pacific Northwest. But yeah, can you paint the scene for us of what
kind of area that you went in, because I know you have to be
very careful about how you tell where we're at for this. Yeah, so
that just is because it was private property, like because normally when you sign
up through a VFR expedition, this is actually I thought this was really cool.
They make you sign an NDA that basically says you're not allowed you're not
allowed to disclose where we're going, how we're going, or what we're doing
until after the event, because obviously they don't want some Joe Schmo dressing up
in a gorilla suit beforehand as a third party and setting stuff up. You
know, they wanted to make it as fun and as actual genuine as possible.
But we actually had to sign a second NBA because this was private property,
basically saying we're not allowed to disclose this to do stuff like this like
podcast or tell other people on a platform like this, we're not allowed to
disclose like obviously because we were literally camping in another person's backyard, like their
house was visible from our tents. It was a pretty bizarre experience, but
it was It was pretty cool. It was out by Fork's Ish, That's
kind of where it was. I mean, there's a lot of wild stuff
out there sides the twilight stuff, but you've got like, what the whole
rainforest is out there? Oh yeah, do you know if this was a
property where they had reached out to the BFRO with a sighting and they had
a lot of activity happening on that property. So yes, it was a
mix of both. It was more of it had been in their eyesights for
a while and they'd been there a couple of times, and it was more
of like a private one of those high up on the food chain. I
guess only a handful of people knew, and they finally decided to release it
out to the public to actually try to you know, do stuff with like
did you to do an actual expedition on Oh, that's pretty cool. So
he kind of walked me through what happened first first day when you first first
got there. Yeah, so we got there in the afternoon ish because the
drive is a little interesting and the time they ride that you're going to do
what even orientation with everybody there, and they kind of told us what to
expect, like how the night walks work, the Calton night operations and whatnot.
They're basically and just picked their camping site and kind of went from there
and on. Nothing really happened in the day, but it's more of the
evening we did our night operations. My brother actually kind of for kicks and
giggles, but the expedition posts thought this was a very good idea. My
brother bought his literal Scottish bagpipes, and they thought it would actually be a
brilliant tool to use because you know, you've ever heard of bagpipe, they're
pretty stink and lab. You put them on a like a high elevation,
they there's nothing in at least two miles. They can't hear it, and
they thought it would be a brilliant idea to use that on a night ops
with One team was with the bagpipes, which me and myself and my dad
Braun, and there was another group that circled around like the mountain because we
are at we're at a base of the mountain. And there was a third
team that was a couple of guys they were going to go camping up on
the top of the mountain and just stay the night there. But yeah,
no, it was. It was a pretty bizarre experience because it was just
like my brother was sitting on the hillside playing bagpipes and there was a clearing
below us, and it would just get carried like after he played, you
could hear it just carry for like an extra three or four seconds. It
was really cool. Do you know if it ever had been used in the
history of the BFO or is probably a first time. I actually, I
actually don't even think so. I don't even to be honest with you,
because I know I talking to these VFRO guys. They were so cool.
They basically very much heavily distinguished that there was a difference between the Finding Big
Fit TV show and the BFR They worked there and within I don't even think
they did that type stuff even on Finding big Fit like the show, So
I actually think that was probably the first time they did something like that.
And I think that's just because the bagpipes is such a hard instrument to learn
that it was just really it was really off putting, but we used it
and it was. To be honestly, I think it was pretty effective what
they were telling us, because something that really I thought was interesting that they
constantly told us that there is no experts in Bigfoot. Anyone who says that
is basically just lining to your face. There are people that are more experienced
that have just learned from like working in the field, right. And something
what they told us from their experience is that because of TV shows like Finding
Bigfoot in documentaries that people kind of kept doing like howls and whatnot to where
they've noticed is that they don't really do howls anymore. They just kind of
like knock or make other noises. So hearing a bagpipe I think really startled
them. And after we played, essentially what basically happened is my brother was
playing some chains on a hillside. There's another group that was below us kind
of circling around, and there was also a group in base camp and when
we were going down the hillside playing you know, open clearcut and eventually when
he stopped playing and while they were playing, the base camp immediately on radio
started calling off that there was knocks going on across the road behind the base
camp, like immediately. And these weren't like from what we talked about later
that evening is these were not just simple like tree snaps. These were like
what you can traditionally call the stereotypical like power knox, just like the wa
wam wham, you know, like a baseball bat to a tree, which
like really got everyone excited. And there was other knocks. People were hearing
them like the other side of the road towards our base camp. And that
was that was really bizarre to here in like two different places at the same
time, basically because it's like, oh, okay, so you don't you
don't know, you know, like this isn't like normal. Did they say
if there was a pattern to them at all or no? They I don't
recall them ever mentioning it was a pattern, but they were just making I
just remember because I was with the group A and They basically just called on
the radio that they were hearing knocks and they would just described it that evening
and everything was said and done. So then you've got you've got knocks happening,
you got power Knox, you've got your brother playing bagpipes. Uh did
the bagpipes continue after the Knox or were you like, okay, let's settle
down with the bagpipes. He actually kept going. He brought it all the
way into base camp and nothing. Basically, all the groups kind of met
up after a good hour or two and we just decided to go back to
base camp, you know, and just sat around the fire having fun,
you know, telling stories and just in general having fun, and my brother
kept playing in the base camp a little bit. Nothing really happened while we
were in base camp. However, when it was more of when me and
my father were going back to bed is when stuff like really kicked off that
evening. So all the groups were in except for there was like a group
of the more of the quote unquote BFR leaders. There was a couple of
them that were camping on the hillside where my brother was playing the bagpipes for
the night and before the group heading back they all had thermals and all this
high tech gear and whatnot, and one of them spot spotted something on the
thermal. Unfortunately, just just how things are, none of them had the
ability to record on their thermal, but one of them spot it on a
thermal, and then they had two other people seeing the exact same thing on
the thermal. So it's kind of like one of those weird experiences where you
have three people with three different thermals all seeing the exact same thing. And
what they were describing. Then we saw this the next day through the recreation.
But basically it was this really thick hickory bush, so you like you
really can't see through it, or like even the thermal can't peek through it,
but they would see like the top of like I don't know, I
describe it like a cone head basically, and it would like peek up and
then go down, move like six or seven feet to the right, peekup,
look down. It would keep going and it did this about a dozen
or so times from what I recall from what them saying. But it was
just really weird that they all three of them were seeing the exact same thing,
and this was like way thick in the woods, like there wasn't anybody
from our group back there. And then on top of that, there was
a third guy that was behind that was kind of acting as like a watchman.
He kind of was following us, like thirty forty yards behind, and
he kind of was trying to get the group's attention because he was hearing something
walking behind them, and of course everyone when that happened, everyone turned the
attention to wherever the walking sound was coming from up on the hill. It
was behind us about them by about twenty or thirty yards, and I personally
think looking back to it, it was kind of like a decoy trying to
get us to distract it because they basically were looking down to it in the
sackory bush patch and there really wasn't anywhere for it to go. And there
was the second one behind us, behind the group up the hill, and
it was like making sounds and not like sounds, but it was like making
really loud, like stopping sounds, and I think it personally distracted the group
just long enough for the other one to get ay. That's what the group
conceded with hindsight the next day. So that happened, and then the group
came back, and then everyone was kind of like really pumped up after that
happened. Wow, And that was that just the first day? Then?
Oh, that was just the first night. Oh my goodness. Wow.
And how late was all that happening? Again? This happened probably between eight
pm to eleven pm, so in the span of like three hours. Okay,
so it happened at eleven pm. And then how late did you guys
go to bed or did you do a thing where it's like you're staying up
all night? Oh? First night, I think we went to bet around
like midnight or one in the morning. We didn't stay up that late.
But it was when me and my dad, like we were going back to
the truck or in our truck where all our food was and where they were
my dad was me and my dad wanted a twinkie because we just brought some,
so we went back to the camp to get one, and we heard
this rustling in the bushes and we couldn't describe it, honestly, because there
was another guy truck right next to us, and there was kind of like
a little path into the woods, and you know, guys using it as
a cheat sheet sheet, we kind of used it at a little mini bathroom,
you know, this little path into the woods. And at first we
thought it was like them, Like I didn't really think it was much of
anything until it like stopped moving, Like it just completely stopped, and we're
like, okay, whatever, like if just the guy wants his privacy whatever.
But the thing was is it kept moving, and it wasn't until we
heard the only way I can describe it is if you took a two by
four and just clean snapped it, just like you just snapped it into That
was when I like freaked out because I was like, that is not a
person. Like I was like, oh okay, We're like, oh okay,
this is different. And then that was too our like facing the woods.
That was like two hour, eleven o'clock, and then a couple seconds
later we heard like heavy stoppings and then we heard another snap to about our
nine o'clock, and then at that point we realized, okay, this whatever,
it's these hickory bushes. Like the owners of the house surrounded the entire
property in these really tall, ten foot high, about three or four feet
thick hickory bushes. Because you know that they're also were bigfooters too, so
they wanted to see if they could bring them into the property essentially because you
know, if it's a lot more they to their experience. They felt that
it was a lot more comfortable if these things had like more security, if
that makes sense, like to where they could just kind of freely approach people
without being seen, because you really couldn't see even with a flashlight, you
could not see through these hickory bushes. But we were hearing this and this
couldn't have been more than thirty yards back behind these bushes. And at that
point we went back to the cabin or to the group at at base camp,
and we were telling like, hey, we think we're hearing something behind
our camp. And at that point everyone kind of like you know, freaked
out, and everywhere there was a kind of a small group that went out
into the woods. I didn't really go with them. I stayed in base
camp, but like, that really was freaky. Just in that moment you
just hear that like two by four snap, and you're just like, oh,
what was that. You know, that's that's wild and that's a really
interesting piece of info. So you said that the people that own the property
were also bigfooters. So do you know if they did they purchase the property
because they knew bigfoot was there, or did they discover bigfoot and just happened
to be bigfooters. I couldn't tell you, but I honestly don't know.
To be honest, I think more of it was just more of a convenience
thing. I think they noticed it and just like, hey, let's just
put this and plug this in and see what happens. Right, Yeah,
makes sense. Any any interesting sounds have been recorded around the property, Oh
yeah, definitely, not just that property in general. But there's another organization
that we did stuff with. Uh that was the organ of the Olympic Project.
I don't know if you know those guys that those guys have set up
audio recorders like in that whole woods and they were showing us like what they
caught over the past couple of years, and that was really cool. That's
awesome. So the OP guys were there as well. M Oh yeah,
dude, that's that's great. Man. When you you guys went to sleep
eventually and were you woking up in the morning, anything weird happened at you
know, like a two or three am type deal? Oh? No,
to what I remember. I don't think anyone that night woke up to anything
in particular. What's the the morning like on a on a BFL expedition.
I mean, everyone kind of like wakes up and does their own thing.
It's more of they do a nightcap like a like a recap of what everything
happened at eleven am, I think eleven am and Danish like right around lunchtime.
So everyone kind of did their own thing. But the reason before the
morning thing happened, we got approached by the BFRORO leads me and my dad
did early in the morning, right after everyone broke up. They kind of
disclosed us to the side and talk to us, and they wanted us to
disclose what happened because they wanted to wait until eleven am to really tell.
But of course words spread of the snaps that me and my dad heard,
and they wanted the leads wanted to talk to us because they said that there
was a couple of like DFRO guys that went around back there that morning and
they had found tracks following the exact same line of the snaps we heard,
and they wanted to like tell us, be like, hey, like,
don't tell anyone, yet you kind of want to like get the cast in
before people go out there and like destroy the tracks, because they apparently they
were really good tracks, so they wanted to like go out there and cast
it and whatnot. How big were the tracks when we saw them, Like
if you have ever seen tracks before, like you know what I'm talking about,
Like it's just bizarre. It's otherworldly, like there's nothing else to describe
it. There was about one of our the good, the better tracker guys
in our group was he said he was able to track it for about one
hundred yards under the woods ish not very far until he lost it. But
there was about seven or eight really good tracks. They were about six to
eight inches wide and about twenty inches long, and they were about almost an
inch and a half deep into the ground. Like and this wasn't mud,
this was straight dirt. So a lot of weight to push that down,
of course. Oh yeah. And there was another guy in our group.
He was six five if sixty six, he's probably two hundred and fifty hundred
and sixty pounds, probably more heavier than that. And he tried to jump
with both feet next to the footprint to see how deep he could get.
He couldn't even get ninch at all, not eating clothes. Were there any
interesting details in the t track casts that were found, like dermal ridges or
anything out of the ordinary. I was talking to them, a couple of
the Olympic Project and BFRO guys, and they were discussing over it, and
they actually initially thought that somebody was hoaxing us because they were way too good,
like they'd like a lot of a couple of those guys were saying,
this is there are these are the best tracks we've ever gotten, like in
our entire like Bigfoot career. They kept doing like recalls from last night,
like hey, everyone was accounted for, Like this isn't somebody hoaxing us.
But it was the part that just really was freaky is that one of the
steps that came off a log, and the log was not only indented,
but you could see it pressing into the ground and like the toads were splaying
as in each step, which is obviously a big teller if it's fake or
not, because like the fake ones are like the wood clomber, right,
I don't like move around very much. That is really cool. So how
did the rest of the group take that info. When that was shared,
they they were unbelievably like excited, like it was just one of those cool
things, because like it was one of those things like others take it a
step further to say that why we thought they were real because within perfect eyesight
you could see the height of five foot to six foot You can't really see
much, but somebody came in and was able to look at it from an
angle of like six or seven feet, and it was a perfect eye line
to our camp. But where hickory bushes were, it completely covered it.
You couldn't in the middle of the dark, you wouldn't know this thing is
looking at you. And you could have been thirty feet away from it,
because we've it's been standing still, just looking at you. That's all it
did. And that was like really creepy to think that it was just within
like only a couple of yards of our camp just looking at and watching us.
You know, yeah, yeah, that's that's really wild stuff. Was
anyone able to get like a three D scan of it as well or just
stick to track casts? I believe one of the organizers for the expedition was
going to you a three D cast of it. I cannot recall. I
believe they did. I can actually ask them later, but I don't.
I don't know if they did in Ornet. So everyone's everyone's pumped from the
news that you found some tracks and then the news of what happened to you
and your father. So then what happens later that day following we did a
couple of day walks. They actually showed us how to like cast tracks,
which I thought was kind of cool. It was just cool to see like
tracks being cast in real time. Did a couple of day walks, and
then we actually did a recreation of the night before we saw the cone heads.
And the reason why I was saying it was around six seven feet tall
is the bushes of the bush line, like we couldn't see the person.
We had actually a we had a visual like tried to set up see if
we could see them in the bushes. We totally couldn't and they're just the
just the tree line. It was just with hindsight when you do recreations,
just how to like well hidden a lot of things are in the cover of
darkness, Like just things could be right in front of you and you just
do not know. It was really, really freaky doing a recreation and notice
that. Yeah, this thing was probably at least six six to like seven
foot. Oh that's wild. Yeah, was that abound around the same time
of day that had happened originally that you did it too, Uh, yeah,
it was. It was originally it happened at night. I made a
recreation in the day and it was just weird to see it like side by
side, like just like from what everyone's recollections. And then we actually the
guys tried to the guy actually put on bright clothing like neon green clothing and
actually went up the hill. It tried his best to get out there because
there wasn't any game trails. This was like a straight inclined tail, just
forest and shrubs everywhere. And he'd laid on the top of the hill and
started making noises and we could hear him, but we definitely could not see
him. So it was just like another thing was freaky. That was just
like, oh, okay, yeah, that's crazy, and you're you said
it was a four day expedition. Yeah, and that was where only that
was the end of the second day. The second day we decided or the
second night that night ops, we decided to kill the bagpipes because in my
personal opinion, and this is something that the expedition leaders agreed to too,
is that I just thought it was a good opinion was that let's be real
here, if you're living out in the woods twenty four to seven, you're
going to get like there's nothing for you to do really, you know.
So it's like when you hear something like bagpipes, it kind of like it's
different. It's like everyone else. I mean, think about it, if
somebody was playing bagpipes in their backyard, all the neighbors are going to open
their windows, being like the world, but what's going on here? You
know? So I think it's just like a natural response because they're reported to
be curious. So I just thought that was bizarre. But the second night,
we killed the bagpipes because we thought it would be better to see if,
like then it would make noise in response to like other noises that we
did. The second group Group A, we always with Group B that we
did split up into two teams. Group A reported or thought that they were
being followed. Nothing really happened with my group. I was in group Nothing
really happened the whole night, But Group A thought they were being followed,
and they had this new developed strategy that the BFRORO started to is using because
people found out that these things really not really found out would have like come
to some sort of a consensus that they thought that these things will mimic your
footsteps to kind of like mask your masks their steps essentially. So we do
like a three two one stop where all of this just kind of like counts
down to one and then we stop. And then if if it's all as
timed, you know, you can hear like a crunch, crunch crunch of
it like stopping like in the background. And that is a really freaky experience,
especially when it's like it's never directly behind you. It's always till like
your three o'clock or your six o'clock or like seven, like it's it's like
it's your sides behind you, you know, And that was really freaky for
them to hear, like the hindsight like hearing them describe it. You know,
did you actually hear that play out? I personally heard that the third
night, which was the final night. I heard that on the final night,
But the second night, no, nothing really happens. I had a
pair of pairabolics on and I heard whistling constantly, which we deduced the later
by listening to whistling sounds of birds. It was a bird, but it
was just really cool to hear like a pair of paarabolics, you know,
just listening to it. But yeah, that was really all that happened night
too. We were hoping to try to lead it into the camp again,
and no, nothing really happened with that, gotcha. So you got the
lot of stuff on the first day recreate shouldn't on the second day, and
then the third day sounds like that was your your last day to try to
get stuff to happen again, because fourth day it doesn't really sound like much
happened or it's the last sea. Yeah, just kind of pack up and
pack up and leave. But the third day that was really interesting. There
was a guy who showed us basically this sound system that he set up in
the Olympic Peninsula that he would just record sound and he would just spend hours
just going through it. He would record a year's worth of sound and then
go through that audio logue. It was really interesting the stuff that he was
caught, like, because he was saying that there was a recent study out
of then out of I don't know what college it was, but that specifically,
chimpanzees can see infra red, which which was what trail cameras see.
They see infra red, so which is why when they were trying to take
trail camera footage footage of champanzees, they couldn't ever get them. They deliver
Champanzees were elusive, but when they put up audio recorders, they were hearing
the chimpanzees left and right, left and right. So this guy who came
to our expedition, who was telling us about it, he thought it was
actually, wait, why don't I supply the exact same knowledge to Bigfoot?
Like just no trail cameras, only audio recorders, and he was showing us
some of the things he caught. It was pretty cool, just things he's
caught over the years, like random weird sounds like he wouldn't expect to hear
in a forest. You know, was that a OP guy? Yeah?
I bet I know who that was. Yeah, I think we both know.
We were talking about he's a really cool dude. Cool. Yeah,
yeah, oh he's so nice. We're talking about the exact same guy.
But yeah, it was really cool to listen to all the things he's caught
and heard over the years. And that day nothing really too much happened,
but it was that night was actually I think was like the highlight of the
whole trip. I mean, the foot trips obviously were like its own highlight,
but it was just more of my personal highlight. And so the final
night we did exact same thing. We brought up the bagpipes because we're like,
Okay, it worked the first night, not the second night, so
common sense kind of tells you, okay, let's bring up the bagpipes again.
And we did three groups again, guys on the hill. There's a
there were guys circling the mountain and we were on the hillside and the hill
it this time going down the hill, we didn't hear anything, and there
was It just felt dead the whole night, you know, like just the
whole night there was just nothing. And I was with a group of people
and we just it was just our last night. It's like one in the
morning, nothing happened, and me and a group of people we were like,
yeah, let's we want to find something like this is our last night.
We're gonna go out. We're gonna come We're gonna come back, not
until the sun rises, you know. And so this is really pretty cool.
There's this one guy, a survival expert, my brother in a literal
Afghanistan vet. Like the four of us just went running out in the posts,
like running out of the woods, but were really deep into the wood.
We went like at least two miles in, like just random off the
trail game trail we're going in, and one of the expedition leaders is like,
wait, why don't we just start like doing knocks. We're deep enough
to where they're definitely not going to hear us, and the radios couldn't pick
it up, so like yeah, so we started. The four of us
started doing knocks for a little bit. We sat there for a bit,
nothing really happened. We were there out for like an hour and a half
ish, and we decided to walk back. I had a pair of pair
of bollocks on the Afghanistan met I'm not kidding you. Brought his actual military
great helmet with like the ear muffs and the ike goggles and everything. It
was something out of like call of duty. It was really cool. And
the other travel guy bought his like first aid kit in his massive like survival
bag, and my brother bought a pair of night vision goggles as well,
so we were like very set up. But it was when we started walking
back was when the creepy stuff started to happen. So at first, the
only way I could describe it is if this wasn't as loud as a two
by four snap, It just sounded like like you're just like walking by a
tree and you like grab upon a low hanging branch that's like just at your
eye level and you hang on it and you like let it snap. It's
that's what it sounded like. You know. I heard that, and both
me and the guy at the time that he we both looked at each other
because he had a hands hearing and I did hans hearing, and we're like,
oh, did you hear that? We're like, yeah, you did.
It's just kind of one of those cool moments where it's like when you
you both know you're not going insane because you're with you both like each other
like, oh did you hear that? You know? Right, So we
stopped for a minute we heard something, and then we started hearing the footsteps
again, and it was behind us to our right, it was like around
five o'clock ish behind us, So like, okay, cool, so let's
let's that's one thing that they told us was that like, if you think
it's following, you don't let it think that it's following you. Like,
if that makes sense, like you to outsmart it. You want to make
sure that you want to act like a normal person. It's just because it's
curious. The moment you thinks you're timid, it's not going to want to
approach, you know. So we just kept walking and we did the whole
three two one stop, you know. And that's what I got to hear,
the heavy just the the leaves, just crunch, crunch, crunch.
That's what I got to hear it with a parabolics on, which is just
enhanced hearing. And that was streaky when both me and the vet looked at
each other and we're like, yeah, this thing is definitely following us.
And it wasn't that far behind us. It was probably around fifty yards ish.
But the thing is is that that's the other part that spreaks me out
is you kind of know when this thing's around because you don't hear any birds,
you don't hear any nightlife. It's just dead quiet, so the sound
kind of carries farther when there's no nightlife, you know. Oh yeah,
absolutely, yeah, yeah. And we started walking and we kept going back
towards the trail, and we're like, you know what, the one of
the leaders group, he's like, I've been practicing all year to do like
an intimidation growl. I want to try it. So he turned around and
we waited for a second, and then he did the really loud like I
don't even know describe it, like a gorilla grunt or something. And the
part that really scared me, and this thing, actually, this actually still
scares me to this day. We actually heard the footsteps go backwards and just
proceeded to go backwards into the woods until we couldn't hear it anymore. It
just kept going until we couldn't hear it. That freaked me out. Yeah,
And then a couple of seconds later we walked back down the trail.
We're on an actual page trail at this point, like the main trail you'd
see in the woods where like bikes would go back and forth and whatnot behind
us. Immediately, me and the vet turned around because the only way I
can describe it is. It sounded like you took a rock like about the
size of a softball and just threw it along the pavement. You know,
you're like that skidding sound. Yep, you heard two of those, just
like skid skidding, just like across the room. We've all turned around.
Was that a rock? Like it was only like thirty feet behind us,
but it was just like what it was just weird, And we kept did
the whole three two, one stop again and then we heard it again.
We're like, okay, this things. I don't know it's back, but
it's back for something, you know. We did a couple more times.
The final time when we got closest to the camp, we didn't hear anything.
But on that trip we headed back, we told everybody about what was
going on, so everyone is kind of on pine site and high alert,
you know, but nothing else happened that night the rest of that night,
but at that point it was like three in the morning, so it's like
the whole night had been spent at that point. Yeah. Oh wow,
Oh that must have been hard to go to sleep after that for sure.
Yeah right, so yeah, was that I mean, after that, then
you are you're pretty much, you know, getting camp all packed up.
But was that do you think that was the craziest thing that happened during that
expedition? Then? I the footprints were definitely freaky. They were just bizarre
to see. I think experiencing this type stuff in real time is what freaked
me out. To actually hear the footsteps behind you, to hear a rock
skidding across the pavement, you know, and then to look at another person
who is a military vet who uses this stuff all the time, have panic
on his face and he's like, what the heck? What's that? Right?
Like? That was freaking See just be like, oh, okay,
have there been any any visuals on that property or in that area. Uh,
supposedly other people who've come on their on their own personal they have two,
not on that expedition particularly, but yeah, that was really bizarre to
hear. You know, that's wild. So I'm guessing there was probably like
some final uh no you said it was called nightcap or you know, there's
probably a final meetia the next morning. And was this uh is this par
for the course for for BFRO expeditions or do you think it was a little
bit more actually than usual? It was a little bit more action than usual
usual to what they were saying, but they followed still all like the protocol,
you know, with like the expeditions and like the meetings and whatnot.
It was still really fun though. That's awesome. Would you do this again?
Oh totally, I'm doing this again in July. Wow. Do you
think it's going to be the same area or no, it's different. This
place is different. They actually one of the reasons why I'm not revealing the
place of it, not just because it's private property, but it's because this
is an Olympic project and BFRO collision. Everyone played their part, everyone was
happy, everyone had their fun. So this was really this was a really
fun expedition. Yeah, that's awesome that you were able to experience that,
because that you're right, that is a very rare event and I don't think
I've heard of too many more too many other events happening like that in the
past in that area. So that's awesome. It sounds like. Then after
that pretty much all went your your own ways. But you'd said there's something
else that had also happened to you at a point, Oh yeah, so
this place around we kind of went all of our separate ways from there,
and people kind of kind of the Facebook page that they kept for this kind
of died off and everyone kind of those ways. This is back in last
July, but then February, this was recent. This last February, one
of my really close friends was coming back from college early and I wanted to
hang out with him, so we went out to his property. He lives
out in Port Orchard, and there there was an old cemetery in that area,
and he wanted to show me it because they had just renovated it,
because it was like these were like graves going back to like the eighteen fifties,
Like these are really old graves, and they revetovated it so because they
want to like just keep preserved the history, you know, And he wanted
to show me it because the contractors had just finished like the week prior.
So we went up there and it was just one of those things where it
was just like I don't describe it, like you just feel like something is
watching you while you're up there. The whole time. We tried to go
back in the woods, and you know, I was just telling him from
my own personal experience, like you know, just the Bigfoot and going back
on the previous expedition. He thought it was really cool too, and you
know, we're in the woods, you know, having fun, just two
teenage young adults. And it was when we were walking out of the woods
or out of the cemetery is when like weird stuff happened. I can't describe
it, Like coming back from the cemetery, we heard like it was.
That's the part that I don't want to I don't want to describe it as
PTSD because it was just like freaky to hear it again. But it was
just that exact same two by four, just snap coming from this back from
the cemetery, and we're like already twenty five thirty yards away. We're walking
down and at that point I was like, okay, I'm walking back,
Like dude, this is hearing that two times in a row and a span
of like six times, like like from two separate events, is just weird,
you know. So we went all the way back. I walked all
the way back. I didn't see anything, didn't hear anything, but it
was just more of that moment where it was just like, yeah, whatever
it is just doesn't want me there, you know. So we walked back
again, but on the way back, we took a separate route, you
know, because if you know, the layout of port Orchard kind of like
is a circle. So we walked all the way back around and on our
way back around to his house. This was really creepy. I actually got
photos of it, and I sent this to a couple of people in the
bfrow and they thought it was really cool too. I saw we saw a
peerage in the mountain side because it was like a highway and it kind of
on the left hand side kind of turns down into a bank where there's like
a riverbedd and then going up to the right hand side is like this huge
steep hill you know, with like trees, you know, stereotypical Pacific Northwest
like rainforest type like looks. But in the woods there's this like gap in
like the bushes. Coming down. There was these muddy footprints in the in
the driveway and lighting driveway in the in the road in the highway, and
it goes all the way off into the river, the trackscicle all the way
down to the river bank and then on the other side through the river and
up the other side. And this actually freaked me out because it was the
exact same type lookage. I guess if the ones from the previous summer were
like, it's just the exact same style, you know, single file four
feet apart, about the same size. These ones were definitely smaller. These
ones were like six inches wide and about probably fifteen sixteen inches long. But
I actually put my boot up next to it, I'm like, oh,
these are small, Like at first I thought this was somebody running down.
I put my boot up next to it, and I'm like, I wear
size thirteen and men, and I'm like, this is at least four or
five inches longer than my foot, and I can see like toes, Like
this is not okay to me. And my friend are freaking out because we're
like we're just seeing like the track line, like just the breakage of the
bushes coming down like the hill and onto the road and then just into the
river bed. And it looked relatively fresh too, because this is a highway,
you know, there's like mud on the road still, so like if
cars are passing by, you know, it'll it'll ruin, it'll ruin these
like mud lines, you know. So I just thought that was really freaky
to see, you know, in the middle of February of all things.
Yeah, that that is wild. Did you say you got pictures of that?
Yeah? I got pictures of the track line, the track line and
the footprints side by side, and my friend got the track line, and
I got the photo of the footprints of my boot right up next to it,
of the best one, because they were all like you could see the
outline of the foot but it wasn't like really defined, you know, because
it's this is on a this is on a highway. But the one because
it's stepped in the gravel and the gravel I'm not kidding you, it like
pushed the gravel down and you could see the toe line like where the toes
were because like just how heavy it was. I was just freaking out,
like this is gravel, Like how is this like creating this in gravel?
You know? And I sent those a couple of my BFRO guys and they
thought it was the ones from the previous expedition. I still had their numbers
and their contact information and I sent it to them and they thought it was
really cool as well. Jonathan, you you have experienced some pretty pretty cool
things over over the last i mean not even a year and this is your
first foray into it. What do you hope to expect from when you go
out again this year? Honestly, I don't know if I'm gonna I'm not
expecting much because I don't think it's gonna happen, Like lightning doesn't strike twice
in the exact same spot. You know, if I'm not expecting much,
I'm more of because like I've developed friendships with these BFRO people. That's the
thing is that they don't tell you is you develop if you do this right
and you are just a genuine good person, they will. They they're genuine
good people too. I just I'm more there just to hang out and have
fun because these guys are really cool. Like, once these BFRO guys want
you get to know them, they're pretty cool dudes. I just want to
go out and have fun. It's just Bigfoot's just the side piece, you
know. Yeah, you know it's very weird that, you know, if
it's people where they tend to have the right the good intention when they go
out, those people usually tend to have stuff more happen than it's a guy
going out and he's like, oh, I'm just in it for the money.
And the fame, and you're probably not going to have too much happen,
but that might just be coincidence, who knows. I got to ask
you the question that usually always gets asked, but do you have any thoughts
as to what you think bigfoot is just from what you've experienced so far?
So, I mean, this is something that one of the Olympic Peninsula guys
said, and I thought it was really profound, was that, I know,
the reason why I think it's flesh and blood is because it leaves,
scat, leave footprints, leaves hair, what else the leaves footprints, scat
and hair, deer, elk, moose, like every general animal you know.
So it's like, I get the argument for saying that it's that it's
spiritual, but like also, I mean, anything else could be spiritual,
so it's like it just could be anything. At that point, I'm more
and more attached to the physical side of it, because it's like if there
wasn't we don't we call it bigfoot because it leads big foot tracks, you
know, right, true and good point at a good point, So definitely
of flesh and blood. Do you are you thinking more of a of a
ape type creature? Or maybe something that's you know, a lost human type
creature, or do you have any thoughts about that? Actually, that's the
part why I'm so curious, and I don't know, because like I myself,
I don't know. I've just listened to a lot of these spiritual podcasts
that that makes sense because I myself, I'm a Christian, so a lot
of my friends who've done this before, they just describe it as like a
demonic thing. That's the part where I went out there, when I experienced
this and I got so close to it, I didn't feel that weird like
like spiritual the like presence or whatever. It's more of just felt curiosity,
which made me more inclined to think that I think this is more of just
an animal, like a like a just a not half sentient, but more
of like a just an ape that just has a bit more of a brain
to it, you know. Sure. So, so your friends, I'm
gonna guess they're probably they're thinking that it's like some type of like nephile m
or yeah, that's what they think. I mean. As old, the
argument goes, there's two there's two crowds. There's a flesh and blood and
they call them the WU crowd or I don't, I don't know what they
call them now. No, that's that's you know, pretty much dead on.
That is pretty much the big distinction right now, which you know,
there's there hasn't been one captured that we know of that's been studied, so
you know, kind of who knows so far. But man, Jonathan,
it has been a fun chat with you. It's it's always interesting to see
events like this from the viewpoint of someone that is you know, hasn't been
going out for twenty years because I talked to I've talked to a few BFRO
researchers and they definitely have a certain viewpoint. But it's it's very cool to
see things from someone who is new to the subject and be interesting to you
know, definitely keep in touch, be interesting to see if anything happens in
the future for you as well. But thank you so much for coming on.
And how do people you know, if they want to go on their
own expedition with the BFRO, how do they do that? I wish BFRO.
Yeah, you just go literally just go on the BFR website and just
like look at expeditions in your area. The fee there is a fee,
like it's like a three hundred to five hundred dollars fee, and that sounds
like a lot of money. But when you think about it from the place
of that money is not really going to Matt Moneymaker. Like I know a
lot of people are to have negative views towards Matt Moneymaker, which I don't
really care too much and I don't really pay attention to the Bigfoot politics,
you know. But when you put it in perspective that most of this money
isn't going to him, it's actually going to the expedition leads. The guys
that are literally driving out of their way from like Scott Taylor for an example,
he drove it from Oregon. A couple of guys drove it from Idaho.
They're getting reimbursed for gas money because I mean, like you don't want
to drive all the way from Boiseing back or Portland and back, you know.
So it's like these guys are doing it for fun. They're doing it
because they want to experience the attention, the love, and the dedication that
they've put into this hobby to you guys, and they're trying to put it
to you guys on a silver platter. Showing that like years of experience,
they just want to get to you. All they want to do is just
have a good time. And honestly, three to five hundred bucks for it,
it's I think that's reasonable. It's really worth it. Like you couldn't
put a price tag on that experience. It was just really cool. Yeah,
And I think the connections that you would make out of it and the
people potentially you could meet at one of these events, that alone, to
me, would would probably be worth it in itself. I mean you you
have, yeah, definitely a f You met OP members, you know,
and were able to chat with them, and I mean that alone is awesome.
So oh it's actually they're very rare and hard to get ahold of apparently,
and so actually getting to meet them and like experiencing like just talking to
them, Like those guys are like veterans and they have years of experience and
just hearing their stories. I got some wild stories and I love just listening
to them. You know. Oh I bet man that I bet the stories
that are shared on those expeditions are pretty wild. But I bet they also
probably stay in the expedition. Oh yeah, dude, I talked to a
lot of guys that actually a couple of the guys who actually worked on finding
Bigfoot actually were there at the expedition and they were telling me like behind the
scenes like the TV show, like how it went down, and it was
just like really different. It was really cool, Like here somebody who worked
behind the scenes, like tell how it works, behind the scenes, like
how weird it was. You know, Oh, that would be awesome.
I can probably, I bet I can guess want or I can guess who
those guys are, but I won't. But yeah, that's the cool thing
about the Pacific Northwest events is you have some really cool people showing up.
But Jonathan, thank you so much for h for reaching out to me,
and I'm glad we had this chat. I think this is a fun one,
So thank you. Yeah, hey, you're welcome. Please take a
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But thanks again so much for listening. Guys, Her and I can
get out here and we can tell our stories. Maybe there's somebody else out
there listening it's too afraid to tell their story. Maybe this will give them
the courage to come out. And now I feel so bad about it.
Who cares what anybody thinks. I know what I saw, I know what's
out there. That's all I care about. Please let people know, Please
let them know. If you ever see one of these things, you need
to tell because if you don't, then shame on you, you know,
shame on you